Archive for trash TV

Reality TV could be so great. It could be giving us information. It could be teaching us. It could be sharing lives in which the participants are doing good positive, uplifting things. But it’s not.

Reality TV, like soap opera, relies on the most simplistic of dramatic motivation and that is the struggle of binary oppositions. We start out with a fairly calm set up, a group in balance and then we drop in the irritant. There is always at least one person meant to cause trouble, to undo bonds, to stick in one’s craw.

While the grain of sand that makes it way into a clam shell is covered in layers of protective coating which eventually makes a beautiful pearl, me thinks the product of reality TV is not so enchanting. The only value of the irritant in TV is to get viewers to watch. We viewers can’t produce coatings to protect us from the trashy invasion in our heads.

I have managed to watch the first two episodes of LA Ink and I have spotted the irritant or should I say irritants. The biggest one for me in just two shows is definitely Rooftop. What a fucking negative wanna-be ass bite. The nickname undoubtedly comes from some crazy stunt observed by his buds, something involving a rooftop, right? So very teenage bad judgement and so very boring.

He makes fun of Nikki Sixx for speaking lovingly of his and Kat’s romantic getting-together moment.

Dude, I think you have rock starts confused with drunken, dumb-ass, not-even-frat-boys.

The other irritant, over at American Electric is new-girl tattooist, Ruthless. It really disgust me to think LA Ink is going to employ catfight antics between the fine Amy and the paranoically territorial, Ruthless.

Should I be disgusted? Or should I get a grip and realize we have entered the old-timey circus, freak show territory. Wrestling, Roller Derby, Tattoo Bitch Fights — all low brow entertainment. All in fun. If only I could push myself to an ironic, all for giggles place. I mean, really, I need to get with it.

I think if Poison Dwarf, Rooftop, stays on board I will be able to hang in the pits and make appropriately ugly roaring noises. Still, the crude creeps seem to win or at least maintain their equilibrium for far too long in this show. Their divisive presence only squelched at the very last moment. This smacks of some kind of rudimentary dawn-of-film silent movie ploy. Ooh, ahh. That train’s going to run right into us. Run!

As an optimist I keep hoping that story threads will some how lead to the high road even though I know they never will. I really want to see things grow in a positive way but that ain’t the script they are working on LA Ink.

In the real world I already know that Kat and Nikki, attractive, rockin power couple are dissolved. I can’t help but imagine that the poison dwarf irritant worked its evil magic on that pairing though I know that it’s probably more that Kat von D is just hopelessly self-absorbed and that probably gets real old for the boyfriend. Nikki knows a thing or two about being self-absorbed but he’s pretty cool and very cute and maybe even a little bit smart.

Artists often need to be self-absorbed and to lose themselves in their work but on top of the self-absorption there is a real heavy helping of brutish bad taste. Why would you befriend a creep like Rooftop or any of those mini- testosteroned mutants Kat seems to enjoy. It must be the modern short-man’s complex. No more Napoleon. They’ll just jump off rooftops and staple their balls to our thighs or whatever crap these brainless crapped -out dorks dream up. I’ll admit that my impression of the post-modern Jackass-type dudes is not based in real one to one knowledge. Would you hang out with these idiots? I just have to assume that one should never mistake, as I once did, Kat’s ambitious, artistic, rockin’ presentation for wit or intelligence.